Sunday, December 23, 2012

Cutting down the flab

This
week, I had an occasion to attend a family gathering, where almost
all of my first and second cousins along with their spouses were
present. It is a fact that in our generation, I happen to be the
eldest cousin and all others are at least ten to fifteen years
younger than me. Even then, almost all of my cousins are nearing
fifties and some of them have even crossed five decades of their
lives. Their spouses also are naturally of the same age group.
Observing all of them during the gathering, one thing struck me. All
of my cousin brothers now had well rounded midriffs with some of them
having a balloon like mid section, whereas my cousin sisters had
become abnormally fat and obese.

I must
say that balloon like midsections for men and all round obesity for
women, is not something that is a specialty of only my family. It is
a fact that all over the world, persons of this age group (45-60) are
facing this menace of increasing obesity. Unfortunately this flab on
the body, brings along other guests with it, like high blood pressure
or hypertension, diabetes and arthritic joints and these unwanted
guests actually thrive and are happy under the generous patronage of
this excess fat on their bodies. For ladies in particular,
unwarranted flab has become a curse of the modern times.

A
study with a large size of samples, was conducted over a decade
and a half, by a medical team led by Dr. I Min Lee working with
'Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston,
US'. They have published the results of their study in 'Journal of the
American Medical Association' recently. Dr. I Min Lee had selected
34000 healthy American women for this study with an average age of 54
years. In fact this study was started by Dr. I Min Lee in 1992
itself. To start with, in the first year, for each and every woman
under this study, her weight and number of hours for which she had
done regular exercises was noted for every week. After this, the
same data was collected after every three years.

Results
of this study have brought up some extremely interesting
observations.

During
the tenure pf the study or 15 years time the average weight of these
34000 women had increased by 2.5 Kilograms. For a group, where
majority of women were putting in at least 7 hours of exercise per
week, no weight rise was observed. This group actually had about 13%
of total number of women under study. (34000) The study found a
correlation between exercise hours per week and the wight gain for
only this group. For rest of 34000 women, it was found that there was
no correlation between whatever exercise hours they put in and the
weight gain. The women, who were obese, had no effect of exercise on
their weight at all.

From
this study, Dr.Lee has concluded that each every middle aged woman
should take care that she does not gain weight because if the weight
is gained, it just can not be reduced by exercise alone, a controlled
diet becomes a must. To avoid any weight gain all middle aged women
must do exercises like brisk walking or cycling for at least 7 hours
every week.

It
becomes clear from Dr. Lee's findings that exercise is not optional
for middle aged women. If this is not done, there is bound to be a
weight gain. We find that ladies, who were quite fit and slim,
suddenly start gaining weight in middle ages and tend to becomes fat
and obese. The principal reason for this weight gain is lack of
regular exercise. It is quite true that most of the ladies of this
age, have too many responsibilities and lots of work to do and as a
result do not find enough time for exercise. However they should
remember that if they do not find a time slot for their exercise, it
is most probable that in next 10 or 15 years they are likely to
become obese with too much of unwanted flab, which is a sure shot
invitation for many diseases.